Atole Blog's

FRIDAY 6:30 PM: (No Easter Weekend estimates yet.) Twentieth Century Fox's Rio may be about a bird, but very early numbers show "it's holding like a rock," a studio exec just emailed me. Lionsgate's latest in Tyler Perry's franchise, Madea's Big Happy Family, looks soft. This is, after all, Perry's sixth cross-dressing film; the last one opened to $41M and the one before was $30M. But overperforming is Fox's intriguing for adults and Robert Pattinson's Twi-hards Water For Elephants based on Sara Gruen's best-selling book and written by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Francis Lawrence. "Terrific start for Elephants as we could hit higher teens," a Fox exec tells me. It's also a good day for Universal's holdover Hop from Illumination Entertainment which will pop on Saturday and Sunday for the little bunnies and their parents. And Disneynature's African Cats narrated by Samuel Jackson is also playing strong for a nich nature movie. So it's not a bad Good Friday in more ways than one!
Refined numbers and full analysis coming later. Here are Top 5:

1. Rio 3D (Blue Sky Studio/Fox) Week 2 []
Friday $11M
2. Madea's Big Happy Family (Tyler Perry Studio/Lionsgate) NEW
Friday $10M
3. Water For Elephants (Fox 2000/Fox) NEW
Friday $7M
4. Hop (Illumination Entertainment/Universal) Week 3 []
Friday $5.5M
5. African Cats (Disneynature/Walt Disney Studios) NEW
Friday $3M
6. Scream 4 (Miramax/Dimension/Weinstein Co) Week 2
Friday $3M